Limberlost

In the heat of a long summer Ned hunts rabbits in a river valley, hoping the pelts will earn him enough money to buy a small boat.

His two brothers are away at war, their whereabouts unknown. His father and older sister struggle to hold things together on the family orchard, Limberlost.

Desperate to ignore it all—to avoid the future rushing towards him—Ned dreams of open water.

As his story unfolds over the following decades, we see how Ned’s choices that summer come to shape the course of his life, the fate of his family and the future of the valley, with its seasons of death and rebirth.

The third novel by the award-winning author of Flames and The Rain HeronLimberlost is an extraordinary chronicle of life and land: of carnage and kindness, blood ties and love.

Robbie Arnott’s acclaimed debut, Flames (2018), won a Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Novelist award and a Tasmanian Premier’s Literary Prize, and was shortlisted for a Victorian Premier’s Literary Award, a New South Wales Premier’s Literary Award, a Queensland Literary Award, the Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction and the Not the Booker Prize. His follow-up, The Rain Heron (2020), won the Age Book of the Year award, and was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award, the ALS Gold Medal, the Voss Literary Prize and an Adelaide Festival Award. He lives in Hobart.

‘A strange and joyous marvel.’ Richard Flanagan on Flames

‘Delightful. He jumps playfully between different writing styles in every chapter…[An] enchanting story that also captures something very real about Tasmanian life.’ Guardian on Flames

‘Unsettling…Arnott writes vibrantly about the harsh wonder of nature, his vivid characters becoming almost animal themselves.’ Observer on The Rain Heron

‘Arnott’s eco-fable, set in a politically broken near future, explores the constant push-pull that exists between our capacity for enchantment and our need to exploit what we find…It’s sad and satisfying.’ The Times on The Rain Heron